The Embalming Room

My brother's wake had just ended in the funeral home. Everyone was filing out of the funeral home to meet at a hall for coffee and doughnuts. I decide to stay behind a bit as I tried to collect my thoughts over my brother's recent death from a heroin overdose. I ranged back over my thoughts and tried to see if there was any point at which I could have helped him but I knew deep down that he was gone long ago. He didn't want to help himself so his life lead to this unfortunate conclusion. I hoped to see him again one day, hoping that God would recognize that he was a good soul that simply had taken one wrong turn in life and never got a second chance.

​Two men rolled my brother's coffin away, so I stood up and headed to the exit but I was lost in my thoughts and must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in room that was unfamiliar. The light was on in the room so I decided to take a look around and that's when I figured out that it was the embalming room. I was fascinated with all of the tools and chemicals that they used in the process of preparing a body for death. I walked into the second room and stopped in my tracks as I was only three feet from my brother's coffin. I walked over to it and rested my hand on it and then opened the lid to have a look and that's when his ghost came out of the coffin. 

I looked down at the body and it was still motionless. I stepped back as my brother floated in the air. He smiled at me and then sat in the corner on a chair and pulled out needle that was full of heroin. I raced towards him to knock the needle out of his hand but he was too quick and hovered to the ceiling where I could not get to him. I pleaded with him to come down and give me the needle, but he would not come down. He kept pretending to jab himself with the needle. We were at a stand off. There was nothing I could do. But more than anything I wanted to save my brother's soul from drug addiction. It had taken his body on earth but I didn't want it to take his soul.

Suddenly he became aggressive towards me and swooped down and tried to jab me with the needle. I lunged out of the way but he persisted and eventually cornered me taking wild stabs at my body. I tried to knock the needle out of his hand but he was too quick and jammed it into my arm, laughing as he did it. I waited for the feeling of the euphoric heroin to wave over me but instead my body started to become stiff and rigid and then in one last spasm I died and fell to the ground. 

A day later our coffins stood side by side in the funeral home as we were going to be buried together. Little did I know he had injected me with embalming fluid.